Sigh. It's so lovely to share my experiences and then have people pop up to tell me it's all a waste of time and everyone involved is a useless idiot. That's not a "threadjack", Hulk, that's a threadcrap.
But I'll treat it seriously anyway, because that's just the way I am.
Why do we need all these personal trainers?
For their expertise.
It's the same reason we need masseurs, counsellors, chefs, barmen, tax accountants and so on. We don't
really need them.
We can give each-other back rubs, talk to our friends about their problems, read recipes and cook, buy and open our own drinks, and do our own tax returns.
I mean, have you ever paid $30 at a restaurant? For something like steak and chips and chocolate cake, things that anyone who can read could make for themselves for about $5?
These are all things we can do for ourselves,
if we're willing to make the effort. But most of us aren't, so we pay someone else for their expertise.
When you make all your own dinners and never go to pubs and represent yourself in court and do all your own taxes and fix your own car and learn to play the guitar so you can never buy music anymore and all the rest, then you can ask why people hire personal trainers.
Even then, the answer will be, "okay, you a genius workaholic of self-reliance, but not everyone is."
They sure weren't around 20-30 years ago, not anywhere near todays quantity anyway.
And there weren't so many masseurs, counsellors, chefs, barmen, tax accountants and so on.
But there were also more people working on farms, as labourers, in factories doing manual labour and so on. We had more people doing jobs which involved physical work. Now we have many less. Not coincidentally, we have more unfit and overweight people.
Because people aren't employed in the agricultural and manufacturing industries, they have to be employed in the service industry (like all the jobs I listed above). And because they're not doing physically active jobs, they get unfit and overweight, and if they want to get fit and lean, have to be physically active as a hobby.
Once I worked in a sheet metal factory, using a pneumatic gullotine to cut 2-8mm thick sheet steel. Commonly there were sheets of 2m x 4m, a forklift would come and drop it on rollers, and I'd have to push the thing in, mark it up with chalk, and adjust it so the cut had a tolerance of +/-2mm. That was a lot of shifting around of 100-400kg of metal.
I also took a pushbike to and from work.
I didn't need a gym membership then, nor a personal trainer. I was strong and fit. But then I went back to cheffing, and took the train to work, and what do you know, I lost muscle, became unfit, and put on weight. Then I needed a gym membership and/or a trainer.
So that's how it is: people are less physically active in their jobs, which makes them unfit and overweight; and because people are more specialised in their jobs, they get other specialists to do things for them.
The main reason would likely be from bad diet habits rather than lack of physical activity.
I don't think you realise how physically inactive most people are. You know about the
10,000 steps thing? 10,000 steps is just an hour and a half of walking, it's not much. But it's what they're getting people to aspire to
as a minimum.
Lots of people do very little physical activity at work or outside it.
So do we need personal trainers for diet purposes?
A PT is not qualified to write anyone a diet plan, that's a nutritionist or doctor's job. A PT can only give general advice, like "eat more fresh fruit and vegies, less chocolate and beer, don't smoke."
[my new trainer] Pretty much got sick of and kicked out of training others in gyms/public places.
To me, that's a sign you need to keep your eyes open and be cautious.
I used to have a friend who changed jobs every six months. Every job he went to the boss was an arsehole, all his co-workers were stupid and lazy, he was the only competent one there. But... the common element to all your dysfunctional relationships is
you. Nobody can get along with
everybody, but if you get along with
nobody you might want to do some self-reflection.
Many times before I've met people who claim to have all the answers, and everyone just rejected them because...
"You can't
handle the truth!"
But bollocks to that.
A sign saying, "PTs not welcome" says to me that's a person with a closed mind. "I've got nothing to learn, I know everything already." Which might be true - but I doubt it. So be cautious in that gym, and combine your own book knowledge and life experiences with your common sense to make sure you're getting good training and not risking serious injury.